Offer someone a beer. Go ahead, do it. Then, just before you begin pouring, say “it’s homebrew,” and watch your words have their effect. Everyone forms the same mental picture of home-brewed beer – a cloudy, brown liquid, served from a two-litre pop bottle, smelling of yeast and tasting slightly of vinegar.

It’s fair to say that it’s a stigmatized beverage. What your guest might not know is that Vancouver isn’t a bad place to drink homebrew these days. In the last few years, brewing your own beer has gone from being an antisocial, garage-based activity pursued by people’s uncles and grandfathers to being yet another exciting manifestation of maker culture. In growing numbers, people have been taking up the craft and producing their own ales and lagers at home. And, while not so long ago these part-time brewmasters would’ve been limited to brewing up the fifteen-dollar Cooper’s kits from the supermarket (corn sugar not included), they’re now making a diverse range of beer styles, from bitter to bock to sour brown, using professional-quality ingredients.

Dan Small has watched these changes take place. Since 1992, he’s been the owner of Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies, an unassuming but cozy shop on East Hastings, and the virtual epicentre of Vancouver’s homebrewing scene. Nowadays Dan’s stocks most of the beer ingredients a homebrewer could ever need, including a massive variety of specialty malts and whole-leaf hops – ingredients which are to the homebrewer as spices are to the cook. But it hasn’t always been that way. It certainly wasn’t when Small bought his shop eighteen years ago.

The problem was that “nobody,” as he straightforwardly puts it, was homebrewing in those days. There were canned beer kits available, just as there still are, but they tended, as they still do, to produce inferior beer. As for higher-quality beer ingredients, would-be homebrewers were out of luck. “That stuff just wasn’t available back then. When I bought the store, I was [already] shopping here, and I had to get the guy to special-order me everything,” he tells me. “Even then, I could only get hop pellets, I couldn’t get most of the grains; I couldn’t get much, actually.”

Things started to turn around through the 1990s, in large part due to the rebirth of craft brewing that Vancouver experienced in those years. “Shaftebury,” says Small, naming an early Vancouver microbrewery, “was actually really helpful to me. They were selling me bags of malt at their cost just to encourage people to brew. They knew that the more people who brewed, the more people would appreciate beer, the more would buy Shaftebury instead of Kokanee.” One way or another, craft beer did take hold in Vancouver, and microbrewers of ever-increasing smallness and quality have assumed an increasing share of the beer market. And with them have come a new generation of homebrewers who are more interested in making a high-quality product than getting a cheap buzz.

One of these brewers is Matt Thomson. A homebrewer for over three years now, he gives credit to a university roommate for getting him hooked on the hobby, though not necessarily through the way you’d expect. “He’d made some pretty godawful beer. But he also made one really good blackberry wine. And,” Thomson continues, “when I moved to Vancouver, he was making pretty decent beer, and I started to think that maybe I should get into it.” It wasn’t an instant conversion, but the seeds had been sown. Beginning his Master’s degree, Thomson moved into a house with a few other beer lovers, and, pooling their meagre incomes, they went in on some homebrewing equipment together. After making a couple of batches from kits (“they were OK,” says Thomson hesitantly), the roommates lost interest. Thomson, however, decided to stay the course. “I was [thinking], I know I can get better at this. I’m just going to keep going.” And now, three years later, he looks back on his achievements thus far with satisfaction. “I think I’ve gone through the natural progression,” he says, “of starting with some kits, then moving to malt extract, and then eventually getting into grain beers.”

By “grain beers,” Thomson is referring to homebrews produced from scratch, using only crushed grains to produce wort, the sweet malt-sugar liquid which is then boiled with hops in the production of beer. Many homebrewers use concentrated malt extract syrup as a shortcut, and some do so with excellent results. But brewing directly from grain is a significant achievement, and for a homebrewer, it’s the ultimate DIY standard, save growing one’s own hops or barley.

As a brewer, Thomson likes to experiment with styles. When reached by telephone, he was in the midst of bottling his newest fringe beer, an ESB (extra special bitter, a British-style ale) flavoured with ginger. “I’m pretty excited about it,” he confesses. “It’s a self-designed recipe, and based on what’s going into the bottles, it tastes pretty damn fine to me.” Other brewers, however, have other priorities, and for Jen Harvey and partner Rory Crowley, the priority is to make a reliable – and reliably delicious – brew, time and again. When asked whether she sees herself as an adventurous brewer or one motivated by the promise of good, cheap beer, Harvey replies, “maybe a little bit of both. I would think more towards the ‘good, cheap beer,’ with an emphasis on ‘good.’” Harvey and Crowley have been brewing for around two years now, and they brew IPA (India pale ale, a highly hopped Pacific Northwest-style ale) almost to the exclusion of all else. For this pair, homebrewing is simply a way of drinking excellent beer while staying local.

Thus far, the homebrewing renaissance in Vancouver has mostly stayed within the traditional confines of maker culture. Craft homebrewers generally seem to exhibit certain cultural markers – it’s particularly popular, it seems, among residents of East Vancouver and the university-educated. Small notes that a disproportionately high number of his customers are musicians. Make of that what you will. But craft homebrewing doesn’t look like it’s going to go away anytime soon, and might, in fact, be growing. One hopeful sign is that the Vancouver Homebrew Awards, sponsored by the Vancouver Homebrewing Association, RainCity Brands, and The Mark James Group, is set to make its inaugural appearance next month. The competition, officially sanctioned by the Beer Judge Certification Program, offers the winning brewer the chance to brew their creation for the patrons of the Yaletown Brewing Company and possibly other Vancouver pubs. That should give homebrewing some publicity – and, who knows – maybe it’ll make some converts.

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Matt Cavers is not the same person as Matt Chambers. He’s a freelance writer who makes his home in Gibsons, though he keeps up close relations with Vancouver, even to the point of visiting it every now and then. You can see more of his work at http://howesoundings.blogspot.com.